Editorial Yet another girls on gaming sexism editorial

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura; Troika Games

In this <a href="http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/04/16/genderplay_successes_and_failures_in_character_designs_for_videogames.html">editorial</a>, the ladies over at <A href="http://www.gamegirladvance.com/">GameGirlAdvance</a> cover various aspects of several titles you may know and love, <a href="http://www.arcanum1.com">Arcanum</A> for example, and delve in to what they see are problems with character and game design dealing with <i>breasts</i> and other concerns women might have.
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<blockquote>One of my favorite PC Role-playing games is Arcanum. What I like about it is that the gender you choose for your character affects the paths open to you as you play. When you first choose your character, choosing male adds one point to your strength and takes one point away from your constitution (the baseline is 6 points in each category). If you choose female, you get one point deducted from your strength but a one point bonus to your constitution. The biological basis of this might be questionable, but the scheme adds to the variety of character-creation.
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One of the quests in the game involves gaining entrance into a gentleman's club. In this steam-punk Industrial Revolution world, attitudes are still very sexist. The doorman at the gentleman's club won't let my female elf in. But I have a special letter from the owner. At that point the unhappy doorman allows the lowly female into the club, although he cautions me to make my business quick.</blockquote>
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The part on <A href="http://www.interplay.com/bgdarkalliance/">Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance</a> is pretty funny. Makes me wonder if they've seen <a href="http://www.interplay.com/fbos">Fallout Enforcer</a>'s leather thong clad warriors yet.
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Thanks, <b>voodoo1man</b>!
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[Section8]

That's a good read, and I agree wholeheartedly with most of the sentiments. I must say that as a developer I will probably never intentionally aim something at a female audience, not because I don't value them, but purely because I'd much rather go with what I know than go blind into a demographic that is not guaranteed to find my product appealing. However, willfully trying to titilate a largely male audience is sad and pathetic, and primarily a marketing tool, and as I've said many times before, there is way too much marketing in this industry, and it's one of the biggest contributors to the decline of quality games.

 

[HanoverF]

Isn't that horse glue yet?

She looses points for calling BG:DA an "Immersive experience"

I've seen a few similar articles (or posts) where women have bashed Arcanum because the female PCs have the option of using sex to solve a quest or two, and others that don't mind the bar wench in BG:DA, but hate DoA:Vollyball cause the jiggling boobies are whats used to sell the game. I even remember one laughable one bashing Tetris for the overabundance of phallic shaped game pieces.

Can't argue with the summation tho.

It is odd to see this article and a bit further down "Sex in Games: Rez + Vibrator"

 

[EEVIAC]

But in this case the totally out-of-context, out-of-character sex-kitten image of the tavern keeper mars the beginning of the game - it's so pandering, it's so obvious, it's so immature, and above all, it's so completely unneccessary.

Would men have recourse to be upset if the tavern keep had been a grizzled ex adventurer with an arm or an eye missing, claiming that men who worked in bars were being immasculinated, unable to fullfill their true world roles? How is that worse than a large-breasted sex-pot? All the girls I've known who have worked in pubs and cafes have shook it just enough to increase their tips, much to the chagrin of males who are often left dry. Now how is that character not representative of the real world? ... I would have fixed her rat problem for nix in the real world too, like the idiot I am.

Otherwise, what a total load of shit. Rather than pointing out that BG:DA was an abysmal attempt at role playing (I liked it as a two player action game rental though) filled with the most stereotyped D&D cliches immaginable, regardless of gender, she points out the bar maid who very plausibly could have large breasts.

I even remember one laughable one bashing Tetris for the overabundance of phallic shaped game pieces.

There was a comment about the phallic nature of the x-box controller thumbsticks in the article. What shape are they meant to be? I'm hoping she was joking.

 

[DeusIrae]

Wow, reading comprehension skills are not our forte, eh?

One of my favorite PC Role-playing games is Arcanum. What I like about it is that the gender you choose for your character affects the paths open to you as you play.

Bashing Arcanum, eh?

And she wasn't writing a review of BG:DA, or even evaluating its merits as an RPG. Just looking at the way gender works in the game.

It's a good read, click over. Really.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Bashing Arcanum, eh?

No, HanoverF was saying others have bashed Arcanum for this, not this editorial. It's true though, there's even a thread on here where a female gamer bashed Arcanum for female characters not having all races as options, but the manual explains why some of the races don't let their women out.

 

[headache]

I think the problem Jane has with the BG:DA NPC (and I think I, straight male, would have the same problem) is how pandering her presence was, specifically because this is the first character you meet in the game.

Of course a believable gameworld does not preclude the presence of scantily clad bar wenches, but to put one in your face first thing is a transparent attempt at titilation, strongly suggesting there's a presumption on the part of the designers that the game needs b00bies to satisfy its audience. Putting aside the ogle factor (which Jane doesn't seem to have a real problem with in itself, judging from her DOA: Beach Volleyball comments), it's a cliche that makes the player overconsious of the hand of the game's designers and their unthinking determination of what their audience wants, undermining the immersive experience.

It's a feminist but anti-prudish point of view that I agree with. I think this ideology is called "post-feminist": sex is good, desire is normal and natural, but women (and men) deserve to be represented and respected as real, full individuals whether they give you a stiffie or not. To unironically tack on a shallow sex object like this "character" to your media is a cynical attempt to sell the product which seems to me to debase the real value not only of women, but sex and desire as well.

Anyway, the real reason I posted (long-time reader, first-time poster) is because it was cool to see that link here as I'm a shamelessly syncophantic fan of Jane and the band she's in, and to tell you to check them out at http://www.dealerkids.com if you like "indie rock."

 

[huh]

I'm guessing many games simply wouldn't sell without this stuff shoved into your face(and over the top violence) they suck so bad. if they can't appeal to you brain, they gotta appeal to something else. if a game is good, especially an RPG, it's all good. don't self-censor it. violence, strife, racial tensions, sexual relationships, 'isms', etc... but it gotta be good, make sense, and used in moderation, and with taste. bleh, some of these qualities can't even be defined, but I know when I see it.

what puzzles me, though, is that people (including this article's author) seem to be okay with guns (the lara croft piece), and blowing people's heads off, but cringe at every nipple they come across.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

The shame with things like this is there always seems to be some amount of silliness ("laughably phallic joystick") that kind of ruins it for me. Realism is good. But even that pisses some people off. Women can't bench press as much as a general rule - isn't sexism, it's anatomy. It's easier for a typical woman to use flirtation and sex to get her way than a typical man. Sorry, it happens, but some people scream and holler when they actually see it in a game. Glad to see she doesn't take quite as extreme a view as many, though.

I would like to see more realistic women in games just like her, though. I agree a good bit of the portrayal of women seems to ring a bit hollow, and the cheap titillation stuff is just rather silly. Here's a crazy idea, though, how about more women make games? Kind of like what Section8 was saying, I wouldn't feel that comfortable writing things from a female point of view, and I'd probably mangle it horribly anyway without even meaning to. I probably wouldn't buy too much of what an all-girl group of designers think a man's life is like, so I can naturally see the opposite is probably true. You want to see more realistic images of what a woman's life is like in games, get women to write that part. Seems simple.

 

[Zetor]

That's an interesting trend, indeed...

On the whole (unfair sweeping generalization alert!) the US seems to be very 'prudish' when it comes to videogames, but doesn't care about violence in them. OTOH, the EU [especially Germany, cf. the various 'blood patches'] is of the opinion that 'violence in videogames = bad', but they aren't really concerned with sexuality in games. Or that's what I've seen so far, anyway.

Soooooo, the next step is logical -- all game dev houses should move to Australia. :twisted:

-- Z.

 

[EEVIAC]

And she wasn't writing a review of BG:DA, or even evaluating its merits as an RPG. Just looking at the way gender works in the game.

Maybe not but it was a critique on gender roles in games, a critique that I think was misplaced. I was trying to point out that games are yet to include accurate portrayals of male roles, let alone female or black, or... When was the last time you saw an Indian woman as a selectable character? What about a male Australian Aboriginal? Rather than it being a result of sexism in game companies, I think it comes down to limitted time to include gameplay features.

I think the problem Jane has with the BG:DA NPC (and I think I, straight male, would have the same problem) is how pandering her presence was, specifically because this is the first character you meet in the game.

Agreed, kind of. I was playing the game with my friend who was 16 - the first time we saw that girl he yelled "holy shit' in delight and I kind of shook my head and laughed at him. When you think about it, the poor girl has limited options in what she can do in that world, she'd hardly find armour that would fit.

Soooooo, the next step is logical -- all game dev houses should move to Australia.

Slight correction, in Australia you can have sex or violence, but not both. GTA 3 ran into problems because of this.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Maybe not but it was a critique on gender roles in games, a critique that I think was misplaced. I was trying to point out that games are yet to include accurate portrayals of male roles, let alone female or black, or... When was the last time you saw an Indian woman as a selectable character? What about a male Australian Aboriginal? Rather than it being a result of sexism in game companies, I think it comes down to limitted time to include gameplay features.

Well, to be fair, most games aren't set on present-day Earth, so who really cares if you can't play an Indian woman? I wouldn't want a lot of blatant real-world stuff, honestly, seeing stuff like Yoshimo in BG2 is really enough to turn me off; I'd rather see an original game world that lots of stuff copied verbatim from Earth. Lots of time they'll let you choose skin color and sex, and that's about all you need. Most present-day stuff is alluded to in the context in a broad sense, like race relations can be substituted by species relations. In a world with elves, dwarves, or slimy aliens, nobody's going to give a damn what your skin color is as long as you're at least the same species. Men and women are still different, though, yeah, I'll buy that.

Agreed, kind of. I was playing the game with my friend who was 16 - the first time we saw that girl he yelled "holy shit' in delight and I kind of shook my head and laughed at him. When you think about it, the poor girl has limited options in what she can do in that world, she'd hardly find armour that would fit.

Not true, judging by most female PC's, I'd say she'd fit right in.

 

[EEVIAC]

Not true, judging by most female PC's, I'd say she'd fit right in.

Hehe - I stand corrected. The sorceress wore pretty revealing underwear if I recall correctly. I hope she used talcum powder inside her armour, metal chafe is painful.

If the barmaid did wear armour, would she recieve a negative damage modifier due to the mass of fatty tissue cushioning the blow to her chest? Would it cost more due to the custom nature of said armour?

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Hmm, maybe -1 bludgeon damage to frontal torso attacks, but she'd probably also have a permanent -5 HP from back pain, at least until she found the +5 platemail of extra support. I think the smiths would be too busy drooling to remember to charge extra for customizing her armor for her. Mostly as a result of taking her measurements. So she'd come out okay.

 

[Flarnet]

what puzzles me, though, is that people (including this article's author) seem to be okay with guns (the lara croft piece), and blowing people's heads off, but cringe at every nipple they come across.

But see, that's exactly what the article is NOT saying. Go read the entire thing and you'll learn that the point is much more refined than what you think.

Slightly off topic, I would say that the author of the article is beating a horse that passed away in pre-historic times. And not only that, but she also fails to point out that it's probably just a facet of a much larger problem. Which is that of an industry that rivals the movie industry in terms of size, but comes short of it by an order of magnitude when it comes to level of craftmanship and more importantly artistical vision, direction and execution.

When a movie director makes a movie there is of course a lot of thought that goes into the mental and physical characteristics of the characters. It's thoroughly described in the script, and the casting director is given additional instructions on top of that.
Let's face it, if Pamela Anderson shows up to try out for the leading role in a movie like "Silence of the lambs", someone is going to get fired.

But in computer games, characters are somehow allowed to slip by that wouldn't meet the standards of a low budget Brazilian soap opera. Sure, the lead characters are often described in detail in advance. But anything slightly below lead characters (like, say, a bar maid) are often just left up to some artist to come up with. Artists that I by personal experience can say is on average about as feministic as a gallon drunk David Lee Roth.

Then again, parhaps using a fantasy rpg as an example isn't the best choice. After all, many would argue that campy stereotypes are a corner stone of the genre, and that they are far away enough from reality to be disqualified as an indicator of the mindset of the industry.

 

[EEVIAC]

Which is that of an industry that rivals the movie industry in terms of size, but comes short of it by an order of magnitude when it comes to level of craftmanship and more importantly artistical vision, direction and execution.

You'd have to admit that the medium and the creative process that gets them to work are very different. I can sit down with a person and tell them exactly who a character is, what their motive and emotional state is, in maybe 30 seconds. I can't sit down with a computer and just tell it "this character is like a jilted Knut Hamsun hero." Its much easier to get a person to act like another person than to get a computer to act like a person.

Saying that, I agree with you in regard to the state of writing in games. The artistry seems to be found in design and complex implementations of features.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Slightly off topic, I would say that the author of the article is beating a horse that passed away in pre-historic times. And not only that, but she also fails to point out that it's probably just a facet of a much larger problem. Which is that of an industry that rivals the movie industry in terms of size, but comes short of it by an order of magnitude when it comes to level of craftmanship and more importantly artistical vision, direction and execution.

That's a good point. I think I read somewhere the video game industry became bigger than the movie industry last year. You sure don't see $100 million games being made, though.

It's probably going to take a little time before games get the kind of highbrow appeal that draws big writing talent. At least it's already happening with TV, and you never saw that before.

You'd have to admit that the medium and the creative process that gets them to work are very different. I can sit down with a person and tell them exactly who a character is, what their motive and emotional state is, in maybe 30 seconds. I can't sit down with a computer and just tell it "this character is like a jilted Knut Hamsun hero." Its much easier to get a person to act like another person than to get a computer to act like a person.

I've read plenty of characters in books that were far more believable than movie characters. Sure, a really good actor can make me believe a part, but so can a good writer. Games also give more opportunities than books to have a character fleshed out, most of them just don't take it.

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

A rather good article. Not a bad site.
Still, the Rez one was a little...............odd.

 

[Psilon]

I heard about this article on Slashdot and practically 80% of comments containing links mentioned the Rez article. That one piece probably quadrupled her hit count.

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

Wonder what she does with the Steel Battalion controller..............

 

[ecliptic]

I bet she really loves the ... POWER GLOVE!

Hardy har har.

 

[Mistress]

I'll just drop in on this one without responding to posts in the thread, as I have only just read the article.

Good article - I enjoyed reading it and it certainly made interesting reading. Some of the comments on it however, leave a lot to be desired. It's a shame in amongst some really considered and decent comments, there is always one that posts something like: "too long article, make it shorter then ill think about reading it.."

I'll post more later when I have time!

 

[Mistress]

Okay - lengthier reply with, of course, quoting....

I never played this game. It looked fun, and I was excited about having a female protagonist. Outside of fighting games there hadn't been a whole lot of games starring strong women. But frankly, the way this game was marketed and talked about totally turned me off. It was immediately clear to me that I wasn't supposed to identify with her. In fact it seemed to go out of its way to assure young teenage boys that they shouldn't identify with her, they should just ogle her.

I played the Tomb Raider games, mostly because so many of the guys I know loved them at the time, and insisted I should have a go. I never played any of the games for very long, just long enough to know that I thought they were utter crap. I wasn't at all bothered about the way the games were marrketed, mostly because I don't pay that much attention to marketting. I didn't like the games because I didn't feel they played well. This is probably partly due to the fact that in the main, I don't like playing from that perspective. Also, I found the parts that I did play, quite dull and just wasn't motivated to continue playing.

I can see the point that people have regarding marketing, but this of course, does apply to everything, including music cinema, books and furniture. For some reason, there seems to be a difference between the "perfect" men displayed shirtless on the front of romance novels, and the portrayal of women in PC games. This difference being, that currently, one seems to be okay, and the other is subject to much debate and indignation from the female community. There is of course, no real difference. Men in romance novels are "drawn" the way they are, because the target audience is, in the main, a female one. For a long time, videogames were largely a male thing, and so, women in games are often, exaggerated images of what the men want to see.

I've never met a man from a typical romance novel, not even one that comes close, and the same goes for women in videogames. It doesn't all have to be realistic and true - it's just fun. Sure, I think that products aimed at children should be less blatant with their sexual marketing ploys, but that is a whole other discussion

Anyway, to get off that comparison before I kill it completely, as a "girl gamer" shudder, I don't give a toss about women in thongs appearing in a game I play. Well, as long as it fits with the setting Just as I wouldn't buy a game simply because it had a sexy, half naked man on the front, I won't pass up a game because there is a scantily clad woman with unrealistic breasts on the box. I didn't leave Tricky's last album, Blowback on the shelf because the girl on the cover was topless and in a sexy pose. Why? Because it's a fucking good album.

By contrast, take Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. This game has an example of a hyper-sexualized non-player character which is so over the top it jarred me out of an immersive experience. It happens at the beginning of the game, which is always a critical moment for setting the mood, tone, and boundaries of the gamespace (Will Wright has said that a player can "sniff out the gamespace" of a game in the first five minutes).

In this case, I can agree that the character is way over the top. I haven't played the game, although I have seen it being played. It looked like total crap. The visible nipples on the wobbly breasted NPC wouldn't put me off, I would just chuckle and play on. Once I discovered the game was utter bollocks, I would stop playing.

To draw this rambling post to a close, I don't separate male gamers and female gamers - we're all just gamers - people that play games - that's it for me. I don't have issues with anything, except if a game is really poor. The representation of women in games really isn't something that I get hung up on, just as I'm not bothered about the way men come over. Of course, if the portrayal of a character, regardless of sex, jars with the content of the game, and the setting, then it becomes an issue. Apart from that, I just want the game to be fun and engrossing.

I'm hoping some of that made sense....possibly not...I'm having one of those rambly days.

 

[EEVIAC]

I don't separate male gamers and female gamers - we're all just gamers - people that play games - that's it for me. I don't have issues with anything, except if a game is really poor.

That's the single most offensive aspect of any game that I play, that it is indeed, complete crap - regardless of other content. If a game is rotten it flat-out insults everyone.

I do think men and women are being shafted, although perhaps not equally, in games. Men and women are generally treated as the same generic alpha meat regardless of genre. The game I've had the strongest personal attachment to is Arcanum, merely because a few of the character portraits actually looked like I do - which matched my fairly weedy technologist character well. I was immersed from the character creation screen onwards.

I probably wouldn't buy too much of what an all-girl group of designers think a man's life is like, so I can naturally see the opposite is probably true. You want to see more realistic images of what a woman's life is like in games, get women to write that part. Seems simple.

Missed this before but this is so true. Games need women like Frances Marion and Mary Pickford to proactively define more accurate female roles, becuase left to men, its going to be lost in a hail of minigun particle effects.

 

[Section8]

It's a completely different debate altogether, but the "perfect male form" as a stereotype to me seems a lot healthier than that of the perfect female. Inthe case of the male it seems to be basically "well toned" which isn't particularly harmful to those desperate to achieve sucha figure, unless they get into 'roids, but there enough ways to discourage a guy from taking steroids, just threaten his member.

However, the female figure is usually huge breasted, with a tiny waist and long legs, which leads to those in pursuit of said perfect form taking unhealthy risks to attain it. Silicon implants are the worst invention ever, they look and feel wrong and are hazardous to boot. Anorexia and Bulimia can't be too pleasant, and having worn heels for a drag party, I can't say they're worth the trouble. Even the seemingly harmless alterations like blonde hair can come back and haunt you later in life when you're left with chemical induced baldness or even worse, some form of cancer.

Sure I may be exaggerating the point a bit, but the main point is that the stylised male figure is more or less attainable to anyone with enough willpower to do so, while the stylised female figure relies on some fairly unique genetics, or cosmetic alteration.

Getting back to the topic at hand, my biggest problem with throwing in G-string babes or visible nipples is not that it's objectifying to females it's more that it's patronising to males and in recent times, an attempted substitute for quality. "Hey this game sucks! But look! Tits! I've got to buy it now!" Like Mistress I'm never going to object to a quality game merely because it has semi naked women, (at which point it becomes a plus - "Hey this game rules! And it has tits! What more could I ask for!" :twisted: ) but it shouldn't ever be wielded as a marketing weapon, even if it is an effective one.